


feliz cumpleaños, mi amour

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (he is whipped), Birthday Fluff, Cuban Lance (Voltron), First Kiss, HBD LANCE!!!!!!!, Hawaiian Hunk (Voltron), Japanese Shiro (Voltron), Kissing in the Rain, Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M, going back to earth (cuba), google translate pulled thru, i love lance and he deserves this, keith thinks so too, lots of rain lots of fluff, pretty lance-centric, the last three are only briefly mentioned but still i am in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 07:09:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11641512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Tell me about Cuba," Keith says abruptly. Lance glares at him, blood rushing to the surface of his skin as he coughs into his fist, his fingers vibrating slightly. Keith, out of all fucking people... "Why?""Curious."— OR, it's Lance's birthday, and his present gets... postponed. Keith takes it upon himself to give him a replacement.





	feliz cumpleaños, mi amour

**Author's Note:**

> yes this is how i reappear from the dead. it's not 7/28/17 in my current timezone but whatever. sorry for this quick lance's bday garbage this was barely edited!!!! happy birthday lance!!!!! i love this boy so so so so much

Lance thinks he’s been getting too comfortable.

Too comfortable with this Voltron business, with Blue, with Pidge and Hunk and Keith and Allura and Shiro and Coran and everyone, everything, with the fact that his homesickness only manifests itself in the late night—when his pillowcase is smeared with tears, and there’s nobody to judge him for it. 

His birthday is, basically, the wake-up call that’s been brewing from day fucking one. Back on Earth, he would never wake up on his birthday alone, because his family would burst through his bedroom door with a homemade cake, chortling a chorus of “¡Feliz cumpleaños a tí!” and opening every window to let the light shine through, and his smile never ended, cutting through his cheeks like the knife through that cake.

Then, the festivities would start. One of his hermanos mayores would force a birthday hat onto his head, and he’d let the string dig into his neck; his hermanas mayores would crowd around him, kissing his cheeks and leaving bright pink marks they told him to appreciate because ‘that’s the only kiss you’ll ever get from a pretty girl, Lancey!”; and then the nieces would prove them wrong, climbing onto his shoulders and arms like wild little monkeys and tickling his ear with breathy whispers of “happy birthday, tío favorito,”; and then his Papá would rub his head and exclaim loudly how he’s an age closer to a foot in the grave, and Mamá would shoot him a smiling glare and clutch Lance close to her chest— 

So if he wasn’t on the verge of tears at eleven o’clock, he certainly is now, when the clock is about to strike twelve.

There is, however, a worse part. A part that’s worse that the fact that team Voltron has forgotten his birthday—not even. They’d swept it under the rug, acknowledged it briefly like rain on a windowsill, and then went back to their blade polishing or food goo creating or who the hell knows what. 

No, the worse part is that they were supposed to land back on Earth today.

“We’ve picked up a faint presence of Galra sympathizers on Earth,” Allura had said the other day, when she’d called a team meeting. The only thing everyone managed to get from that was ‘we’re going back home, fuckers,’ and the whooping began—the whooping, the noogies, the high fives, the excited exclamations. Allura allowed them precisely a minute and thirty seconds worth of celebration before pushing through briskly.

“Don’t get too excited, because we’re just meant to go down and see if we’re reading the signals wrong,” She had continued. You couldn’t help but notice the subtle smile she was sprouting, though, as if she’d rigged those Galra sympathizers to choose Earth just for her team. “It is a fairly new program, after all. Are we clear?”

They were clear.

That night, Hunk made pizza—Altean pizza, admittedly, but if you spiced it enough and closed your eyes you could pretend it was the greasy kind from the parlor down the street—and Coran poured them all a shot (or two, or three, or four) of a fizzy green drink, and they clinked glasses because to hell with it, they were going back to Earth.

“To Lance’s birthday!” Pidge had yelled, and Hunk clapped him on the back. “To Lance’s birthday on Earth.”

“Uh, it’s the day after—”

“Who cares? You’re back home on your birthday!” 

“To going back home,” Shiro had toasted afterwards, because they weakened him down enough to force him to join the party. “However brief”—he inclined his head to Allura in notice, who just smiled and rolled her eyes—”That stay may be.”

They drank to that.

And with the way that drink made Lance feel, he expected a hangover the next morning, he really did. Fortunately for him, he got something much worse.

“Paladins,” Allura had said on the day everything went to shit, on the day that Pidge wouldn’t stop twirling their glasses and Hunk wouldn’t stop biting his nails and talking about the green-sanded beaches of Hawaii; on the day that Shiro had to tell even Keith to calm down, the same Keith who might as well have been rendered a statue on the regular days. “I’m afraid… I’m afraid we have to postpone the Earth mission.”

And the silence that followed didn’t even die out slowly. It just fell to the ground in an instant, dead, leaving behind only the vaguest hint of a pin dropping, because suddenly it shattered with a broken “...What?” from Pidge.

“A storm has struck the very place we were supposed to land,” Allura had said, almost glumly. “We suspect the sympathizers took note of our radar, which is just leading us to believe they’re plain old Galra. Reasonably close to the Garrison, as well; or, at least, in the same… ‘state’.” Nobody bothers to make fun of her pronunciation of state, or even to look at Keith; they were all too busy finding themselves in states of disintegration. “The threat of Galra also contributes to this.” 

The first thing he noticed was how Keith ran off when Allura allowed their mourning. He wished he had thought that quickly, but the tears were already incoming; there was no holding back.

Pidge bent the frame of their glasses. “My—my mom,” They said. Dully. A voice of paper, about to be ripped. “She’s lost everyone. And I needed to… I need to tell her she hasn’t…” 

And on the right of them was Hunk, tears making his eyes seem bigger than they actually were, too distraught to continue to boast about Hawaii and it being the greatest US not-state, too distraught to do anything other than clutch to the only piece(s) of home he had left. “A fucking storm—it’s just rain what the hell what the hell what the fuck, I’m going to forget what Mom and Maluhia look like—”

Shiro wasn’t crying, or even frowning. His eyebrows were brought so close together you’d think they were going to knot into one, and the whites of his knuckles glowed; he looked like the white-hot of a flame, something untouchable but destructible, and he was whispering something Lance couldn’t understand but he somehow knew it was I’m sorry.

Lance forgot he existed, then. Because it didn’t matter that it was his birthday like it did before, because this was his wake-up call. His wake-up call that finally feeling happy with Voltron was a mistake, that he should be punished for not missing his family more, for forgetting one of his nephews’ names and table manners in Spanish. (Codos de la mesa. Pasa la sal. Codos de la mesa…) 

It didn’t matter that he ran through names and dates every night like a religion, that he was doing as much as he could to protect them, because ultimately, this war wanted him dead.

And that meant ‘dead’ in every single way.

+++

“Allura,” Keith begged. “You have to do something.”

She shook her head somberly. “I’ve tried, Keith,” She continued. More than ever, she had the air of someone aged beyond her time, because she scarily resembled a disgruntled mother who wanted the best for her kids. “I never would have responded to an alert so quickly and cautiously if it was a different planet. I knew you needed to see your home to keep going… but it’s too dangerous.”

“Why? We fight Galra all the goddamn time. I see no reason why this is any different.” And he really didn’t. Sure, Keith may not have had a family to go back to—unlike the rest of Voltron, his only parental figure was with him already. (Shiro, obviously). But he had wanted to see his home one more time. Even the Garrison would have sufficed. 

Just from these few thoughts, he felt his heart try to claw its way out of his chest and pressed even harder, thinking of Pidge and Hunk and Shiro’s battles against themselves (and Allura, frankly), and Lance, Lance with his head between his knees whispering feverishly to himself in Spanish, this unbreakable boy tipping over a bed of spikes. “It’s a storm—it’s water. Water and Galra. Hey! Don’t leave until you either agree or give me a proper explanation.”

Allura shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut and open as she turned to Keith, taking a sip of something out of a porcelain glass. “We’re washing them out,” She says. “First of all. And you know as well as I do that if we go down there, the team will take out that entire militia without so much as blinking an eye. We need information as much as we need justice, Keith, and frankly… with how you’ve all been torn away from your homes and hurt by the Galra, I doubt those emotions will mix well in such a situation. I’ll… I will get you home eventually.”

Keith was dumbstruck, but made no mention of how he felt, and also of how she has a point. He paused, his throat dry, when he muttered, “Is it Earth-wide? The storm, the Galra?” 

Allura pauses, squinting at him. “Not necessarily. Why?”

“So you can’t get, like, Hunk to Hawaii?”

“No, probably not.”

“What about… uh… can you get Lance to Cuba?”

Allura drops the cup. 

+++

“Why does he get to go to Cuba?” Hunk wails. Keith shoots him a death glare, but he doesn’t bother to lower his voice. “I was going to make a cake. And also why does he get to go to Cuba?!”

“Because it’s his birthday, maybe?” Keith says, boiling. He just hopes nobody mentions why Keith was the one to suggest it, because he can’t exactly admit the reason when he’s in the presence of literally everyone. Hunk makes a face at him. “Not Lance. I mean, if he has the opportunity to go home… I say he does it. I meant you.”

He feels Allura’s stare on his neck. He already had to tell her, which was difficult, so he doesn’t doubt telling the rest of the team will go the same way. Keith shrugs. “Guess I’m a good person.”

Hunk keeps staring at him, forehead creased. Shiro’s standing next to him, awkwardly holding his mixing bowl—Hunk had shoved it into his arms to yell at Keith, so Shiro is holding it with the same precision you’d use to handle a child. “Does he owe you a favor?” He asks. Keith just shrugs in response—can’t get exposed if he just never replies.

“Are you in love with him or something?” Pidge teases, and if Allura hadn’t tensed up behind him, maybe he would have gotten away with a sullen no. But then, their eyes darting, Pidge’s mouth drops open and they point an accusing finger at Keith.

“That’s not fair! Why can’t you be in love with me?” They press, as Keith tries and fails to deny this fact, which only digs him deeper into a hole. Shiro and Allura, who are really the only adults in the room at all times, are exchanging amused/irritated glances. 

“Imagine having your first date in Cuba,” Hunk jumps in. “Your home country. In the rain. I can’t believe this. Keith, of all people, is more romantic than I am. I may as well just give up on romance now—”

“It’s not a date!” Keith squeaks, embarrassingly enough. Both of Hunk and Pidge’s smiles are those of starving wolves surveying a three-course meal. He clears his throat, trying to regain any sense of confidence he may still have hidden within him, and cracks his neck. “It’s just… me, not being shitty towards him for once.”

“More like Lance is going to hop on that like there’s no tomorrow,” Pidge bursts. They clap their hand to their mouth as Shiro groans, and Hunk shakes his head disappointedly as if he hadn’t expected that reply. It takes a lot of Keith’s willpower to roll his eyes instead of punch Pidge in the face. “He’s not supposed to know, you idiot,” Hunk says heatedly. Pidge just shrugs.

“I mean, he may as well. Considering the… circumstances…” 

Hunk smacks them along the head, which leaves them pouting but stops them from continuing, at least, which is a blessing.

“Don’t consider it favoritism,” Allura says. “Consider it… uh, scoping out the area, perhaps? Seeing if the problems near the Garrison stretch to a place like Cuba. Because eventually, you’re all going to go back to Earth, either for a short while or forever. Someone may as well test the waters, and who’s better to do that then the Red and Blue paladins?”

Hunk is the one to break the weary silence afterwards.

“Uh… I don’t know if this is the right time to say it but Shiro also owes me fifty dollars.”

+++

“La-ance,” A breathy voice calls. Lance stumbles in his dream of running through the garden behind his house, his eyes shooting open in real time, the warmish feeling in his gut going sour. Of course, his sleeping mask disorientates him for a split second, so he instinctively reaches out and punches the person near his bed.

“Ow!” He hears. “What the fuck?!” And it’s just that that has Lance groaning and recognizing the voice, debating whether or not to just keep the mask on and continue with his day in the dark, but he just winces at the last minute and peels it off. Keith stands there, nursing a soon-to-be bruise on his cheek, fully dressed and not tangled in bedcovers, blessedly enough.

(Lance thought he had made a terrible, terrible mistake for a split second, if you catch his drift.) 

“What are you—why are you in my room?! It’s like four in the morning,” Lance snarls, blushing furiously at Keith’s analyzing eyes.

“I have a surprise,” He says dryly. “Fortunately for me, it involves watching you while you sleep for half an hour and failing to wake you up.”

“You were just—are you fucking Edward Cullen?” Lance is tired enough and so stuck in his dream mindset that he’s fully considering calling the cops, except that they’re in space so the only equivalent of cops is Allura.

“I wish,” Keith says, shaking his head.

Lance just scoffs, even though he would have probably said the same thing if the roles were reversed and he wasn’t still asleep with his eyes open. “Yeah, so can you tell me what this ‘surprise’ is and if it involves gauging my eyes out when I sleep?”

“Not yet it doesn’t. Get dressed.”

“You can’t just rush a man like that, Keith,” Lance says, at first like a joke and then realizing that he really can’t. Skin exfoliation, showering, jacking off and getting dressed doesn’t exactly take five minutes—especially when the first person you see in the morning is Keith, who always manages to look precise.

Keith rolls his eyes. “I can in this case—come on, I got special permission from Allura for you. You’ll like it. I swear.”

Lance licks his lips, faintly following Keith’s concentrated gaze until they’ve met eyes. Lance squirms in his bedsheets, his throat irritatingly parched. Whatever it is, it must be important if Keith is the one to come and, er, get him. 

So with a heave and a grunt and a forehead slap, Lance is forcing himself out of bed to follow the one person he used to qualify as an arch nemesis. 

+++

“Please elaborate on why we’re in your lion and Hunk blew kisses at me,” Lance deadpans the moment they find themselves in Red. Of course, every lion is meant for one person, but if you hold on tight to the person entering you can figure some comfortable arrangement out. To put it simply, Lance has had too many of Keith’s muscular body parts pressed into him, and has smelled too much of his rosemary scented mullet for it to be healthy. 

Keith just shrugs, and when he does the paladin-of-Voltron equivalent of pressing on the gas, Lance shrieks and digs himself into his side. The metal of their suits clamors together impressively, leaving Lance to grab onto Keith’s arm and watch his fierce, borderline dangerous piloting manifest itself in Keith’s focused facial expressions and tensed arm.

He keeps glancing to the side, but when he notices how badly Lance is attempting to find out his plan, he just coughs and crumples up a piece of paper. Gradually, his piloting calms down, and Lance doesn’t even have to hold on to his arm anymore. So Keith clears his throat. 

“You’re probably really confused.”

Lance turns his head to him, as if this is a totally obscure and improbable idea, that Lance would question him when he's just been whisked off into the Red Lion.

"What makes you say that?" Lance asks sardonically, and gasps overdramatically when Keith suddenly jolts Red forward, only to shut him up and to laugh at himself. He shakes his head and punches Keith in the arm, and he doesn't think he's joking about it. 

"It's not like you kidnapped me and are now flying me to some... unknown location. No, this is just an, ah, casual Thursday morning." Lance frowns, willing a thought away as he looks at the stars they're speeding through, ripping apart a black canvas. 

Some foul, tiny part of him is imagining Keith sitting him down and telling him, I brought you out here today to tell you the truth: I'm hopelessly in love with you and have been since the day we met. Then he imagines himself laughing and shaking his head and watching Keith blush. And then he imagines kissing him, because he's the actual worst.

"Tell me about Cuba," Keith says abruptly. Lance glares at him, blood rushing to the surface of his skin as he coughs into his fist, his fingers vibrating slightly. Keith, out of all fucking people... "Why?"

"Curious." 

"Will you tell me about Korea?" The question pops out of Lance's mouth without him meaning to, and Keith's breath catches, even his hair standing on end. And really, Lance won't care what Keith tells him about, because he knows that when someone talks about their home, their face lights up brighter than anything he's ever seen. Every single time.

But Keith has never done it. Even the most stone faced of them—cough, cough, Shiro—have cracked eventually, telling stories and adventures deep into the night. But Keith never has.

"Yeah... Yeah. I will." They pause, the silence not so much awkward as it is contemplative. "You start."

Lance licks his lips, finding them scarily dry. He has promised, after all; or, at least, their equivalent of a promise, where you compromise but consider it the same thing. "I don't know how," He confesses, but once he opens his mouth, it seems to flow.

"It's my home, and it will always be, even if I don't see it again. You've gotta see the waters—I know a lot of people from foreign countries, America especially, they always wanna spend their vacations there, and I don't blame them. The waters are so clear and the grass is so green, and the people I've met there and the way I've grown there is just... it's impossible. It's like it's another world all on its own." He tries not to cry, but it's getting pretty damn difficult. 

"I always used to go there on my birthday. All of my siblings, when we were growing up, our parents would fly us out to Cuba, let us sleep all stacked on top of each other on the airplane and wake us up to point out the sun and the moon and their relations to each other and the stars and everything in between... and then they'd start with the culture, my god, if you got Mama started on the history of her side of the family you could never shut her up. She'd like you." The last remark is slippery on his tongue, and it splits Keith's mouth even wider in two—maybe that's why he said it. But Lance is finding it to be more and more true.

Lance sighs, hitting his head back to keep the tears in his eyes. "Grandmas and grandpas and little primos I never knew I had crowding around me at the airport—sometimes I thought they'd suffocate me. Mama and my aunties helped Abuela make the cake in the kitchen while all of the uncles watched us skim our knees on the hammock outside on the cement, which is still the worst fucking idea anyone's in my family ever had... and once, my littlest cousin and I—we were the babies then—we rode out to the creek in the middle of the night to share our chicharrones with the grasshoppers. Then she pushed me in, and I got all wet but I still called it the best birthday ever because I got a Power Rangers collectible."

Keith gives a dry, airy chuckle, which is his version of unabridged chortling. "What kind of cake?"

"Carrot. Sounds disgusting, but I loved it. With a little me in the corner, orbiting Saturn." He may be getting a little carried away, but it feels good, too good, to be talking about his birthday and himself and God knows what else. Especially to Keith, strangely enough. "And there were waves in the bottom left which always got put there because my cousins love to make fun of me for that one time I tried to surf. And I'm not gonna lie, I fucking sucked, but I thought I would become the waves if I tried hard enough, so I just... I tried."

Keith turned his eyes back to the stars. "We're gonna get back home eventually, you know," He says, in the softest tone Lance has ever heard. So soft, in fact, that he can't help but throw a suspicious glance at him. "You must be really pissed at Allura."

Lance just shrugs. "Nah. I mean, I was. She was the person easiest to get mad at, right? She gave the idea and then took it back, like, on my birthday. But it's no use being mad at her; it's not like she put the Galra there, or the storm there..." He tucks his chin up over his knees, picking at a fingernail as the silence settles again. 

And then, Keith once again proves he can't be predicted, so as an extension, can't be controlled. Because he clears his throat and begins with a knobbly voice: "I've only been to Korea a very small amount of times in my life..."

+++

Keith doesn't tell him.

He can't. He's got Lance in such a good spot—smiling, reminiscing, sharing stories and chatter back and forth—that he can't tell him everything he thinks.

He's smoother than the water, he'd like to say aloud. Smoother, clearer, calmer than a river, a lake, the sea. 

That's what he gets for being the fucking paladin of the Blue Lion.

+++

At some point, Lance can't help but notice a blue sphere-type thing dancing into his sight, at least ten minutes flying distance from their current location. He frowns and squints, standing on weak legs and cutting off some story Keith's been halfheartedly mumbling and trying not to get his hopes up.

"Kind of looks like Earth," He comments, knuckles white with how he's gripping some of the controls, if only because he needs to steady himself. Keith bites his lip as if he's keeping himself from saying something. "Kind of does," He responds indifferently, in the same tone Lance has been trying to master.

He gulps, watching how steadily the Red Lion keeps flying, almost prowling towards the Earth-like planet, ready to attack. He keeps himself focused on Keith's stream of incessant whispering to himself, hiding the most important remarks amidst the rest. "Lance, can I tell you something really quickly?" Keith says calmly. 

Lance doesn't think he wants him to. It's too nice for both of their own goods here in the Red Lion. "Yeah, what?"

"You should probably sit down. I'm gonna speed Red up because I have no patience and I want to get to Earth."

Lance's breath gets sucked through his ears, and he doesn't even sit because he collapses on the floor in a bundle of the closest thing to tears he has within him. 

+++

"If you want to see Cuba you have to get up," Is what coaxes Lance to get up seven minutes later. He may have suffered a bit of a concussion, but that's only because 1. the fact that he's on Earth is dizzying enough, 2. the way he got there (with the Red Lion and her paladin) almost made him vomit and 3. Keith is getting more and more attractive as the minutes go by, and it's worrying.

"Okay," He mumbles. And Lance blindly grasps Keith's hand, clutching it like a vice as he finally squeezes his eyes open—the foliage is thick through the windows, the rain clearing away dust and grime that you never would have seen otherwise.

Rain. He can taste the acidity on his tongue already, feel it cling to his eyelashes, and finds it pitiful that rain is synonymous with home, but immediately vanquishes the thought. Why would it be pitiful? Fuck that. I'm home. Or, at least, I'm the closest to home I've been since Voltron and I've never felt more like crying in my life.

Keith lets go of his hand to let him stumble out of Red, eyes open wide to take in every inch of the ecoregion: the lush plants and trees, coiling within each other, strangely symbiotic; the unmistakable click of unidentifiable insects; the smell, grass and soil and home; and the rain, oh god, the rain, the musk and the water and the very core of everything Lance is familiar with. The rain. 

He lets it mix with saltwater tears, pushing his hair back and feeling it slick it back naturally; he gives a breathy laugh, not believing this is real, the euphoria thick on his tongue. (Which has been collecting rainwater, by the way, because if he closes his eyes he can see himself as seven years old, kissing lily pads and letting rainwater wash his scraped knees.)

He'd almost lost the feeling of his fingers against grass, or the feeling of such life around you; almost as if he can describe the taste and smell and touch of green by guiding someone into a thriving ecosystem on a rainy day. But it's not just green—it's blue, too, a color so vibrant it hurts his eyes (even though the rainwater is colorless), blue piling behind his Adam's apple and hiding within his bones.

Green, blue, blue, green. Birthday cake on a rainy day, and I didn't mind. Smear frosting on my nose and will the rain to wash it away because I thought I had that power. Let Mama give me a new set of clothes, and get those wet, too. 

His senses wake up again, gasping as if they've just been pulled out of a forest fire into the paradise Keith's got him onto. Here's the real fucking wake up call—Cuba on his birthday, surrounded by green-blue blue-green and a red accent, standing behind him.

He's about to go over to Keith, but then he stomps in a puddle and starts giggling maniacally. It's not a rainy day experience if you're in a metal suit, so he'd taken it off to let his clothes get wet, his jeans soaked to the knees. And again, and again, and again, until he's finally close enough to Keith, smile shining.

"Why're you just standing?" He explodes. "Come, on, come on—"

"I'm not much of a—" Keith starts, but once Lance has got his wrist in his hand and his foot in a puddle, Keith is putty in his hands. He shakes his head mock-miserably and kicks the water in the puddle at him, making Lance stick his tongue out and run backwards, almost tripping on the roots below.

"Not much of a what, Red paladin?" Lance asks, grinning. The rain fucks up his mullet in the most beautiful way, and Lance lets Keith smile—lets him more than smile, lets his natural laugh shine through (it's more of a wheeze) and feels the pressure of a hand tugging his wrist in opposing directions.

"You're gonna make me fall!"

"That's the plan."

The sun shines through later than expected, but neither of them pause to look at it until they've stumbled into a clearing between the rainforest and a small little village. Sopping wet and probably pathetic-looking, Lance shields his eyes to watch the sunlight play tricks along Keith's eyes and the water droplets, and then he doesn't.

"Why did—why did you do this?" Because nobody's ever done this for him before. Yeah, his Mama would definitely like Keith.

Keith shrugs. He looks bashful and proud and is blushing a color that may as well dry the rainwater off his face when he starts to mutter, "Feliz cumpleaños, mi am—" in carefully practiced precision, but doesn't finish because Lance kisses him.

Keith gives him another synonym for home and rainwater. Lance thinks these three things will soon become the absolute same thing. He kisses Keith until he can't anymore, and then when he can, Keith launches back in.

There's a hand tangled in his wet hair, and he's dimly aware of how Keith should really brush his goddamn hair more because one of his hands is stick in a knot, but he's so beyond caring it's borderline hilarious. Home, he can't help thinking. Homehomehomehome. Oh, and happy fucking birthday to me.

"Hate to interrupt this little, uh," Keith says when he's jolted away again, his lips hotter than the rest of him. "Yeah, but if we're going to briefly go eat greasy junk food and then get back to the cake Hunk's making I shouldn't be telling you about in time, we should get going."

"Yes. Yes, okay."

So they do. Rainwater pours between them. 

+++

"You should finish what you were saying," Lance says through a mouthful of disgusting but incredible pizza. Keith quirks an eyebrow even though he knows exactly what he's talking about.

The sight of them is very self indulgent: both of them sopping wet, playing footsie under a booth they waited ten minutes for, eating a small mountain of food that can't be found outside of this little town. Keith has fallen in love with the entire country because of this, and wants to sample every single grandma's cooking.

"Uh... no. I never will. Whoops."

"Oh, come on," Lance teases, tilting his head. "It's my birthday. Or should I say—"

"Fuck fine I—feliz cumpleaños, mi amour," Keith says, trying to make his voice low and quiet, smiling just as hard as Lance when someone wolf whistles. Lance shakes his head and looks down at Keith's plate, so that when they both look up, their eyes meet.

"I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you," He says. "And not only because you manipulated a princess to help me get back home for a little. On my birthday. Did I mention this is the best birthday I've ever had?"

Keith shakes his head as if he doesn't believe it, stealing the pizza off of Lance's plate. "You're not in love with me."

"Hmm... now that you mention it, you're probably right. Give me the rest of your pizza to reclaim my love."

"Ha. Keep your love." Keith is about to pick up another slice, when he looks up and then down, almost as if he's trying to look anywhere but Keith. "I mean... you do know that I've been in love with you since... since, oh yeah, I punched Sendak for you."

"Really." Lance tries to use a mock-surprised voice—which Keith is eerily good at—but it's in vain. Keith kicks him in the knee. "Okay, I'm not exactly a dam overflowing with emotions, but I've attempted to make it very clear."

Lance snorts. "Yeah, by either ignoring me at any given moment or casually praising me to Shiro."

Keith's eyebrows shoot up.

"He talks."

They lower back down.

Something surprisingly comfortable settles between them—as if they're meant to be sitting in this booth, sharing two large pizzas and an intimidating assortment of other foods, a boundary broken that lets every word that comes to mind flow out between them. Lance feels that word again: home, and is about to vocalize it, but then Keith kind of does.

"Lance?"

"Hmm?"

"We still do have to... you know... go back and eat cake."

"Carrot?"

"If we get back quickly, yeah. Hunk's talented enough to make it work."

**Author's Note:**

> i can't be bothered with adding italics so i hope u can fill in the blanks. thank u for reading!!!!! ♡♡♡


End file.
